Although increases in the instruction-execution bandwidth of processors has long been viewed as a benchmark for computer-system innovation, the rate at which data can be transferred from memory to mass-storage devices, network interface cards, and other I/O devices, and the corresponding rate at which data can be transferred from I/O devices to memory, may often be the rate-limiting bottleneck for computer-system performance. For many years, I/O data-transfer rates significantly lagged the rate at which processors, multi-core processors, and multiple processors within multi-processor computer systems execute computer instructions. Recently, the advent of solid-state disks and high-capacity electronic memories has begun to greatly improve I/O data-transfer rates. Nonetheless, the computational bandwidth of many computer systems remains critically limited by I/O data-transfer rates. For this reason, designers, developers, vendors, and, ultimately, users of various types of computer systems continue to seek methods, devices, and systems that provide greater I/O data-transfer bandwidths in order to increase the overall computational bandwidth of computer systems